My new job is making me insane HELP!!!!!

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Don`t worry!!! You are not the only teacher who has experience that. I bet most teachers have experienced that. This is my 5th year into teaching. My first week of teaching was like Hell. I couldnt sleep for a week due to bullying received from High School students in the 9th grade.

This is what I learned.
  • Those who bully you are the student that have behavioral problems. Problems at home. ALways remember " Its not you. Its them that has a problem " Never take anything they say personally. If they insult you , give them a deaf ear or walk towards them, looking them straight in the eye…
  • While doing your discussion , the classroom should be your terretory. You should make rounds in every corner of the classroom to see to it that everyone is paying attention
  • If you have a 1 hour class, organize it and make the class busy by doing several activities. You can have reporting in class, group activities, research activities, debates etc… Be a facilitator of activities
  • When a class is noisy, it doesn`t necessarily mean they are not learning. Some students learn best when they are actively talking but you should set the rules.
-Memorizing Students names is a MUST. You cannot call someones attention if you do not know their names.

-Let your YES be a yes and let Your NO be a no. If you say YES to one student that would be a YES for everybody. If you say No to one , that we be NO for all…meaning no favoritism.
  • Give them assigned task like letting them write down things on the board, erasing hte board, helping you out with some things etc… Making a student feel useful will increase their confidence and they will like you for it
-Always treat them with respect.

I think that is all I can think of right now…
 
WildCatholic said:
Sorry if I am insulting but I don’t mean to be, but I guess I’m echoing what most people I know think of groups of people. For years I had to deal with people calling my brother retarded and I hated it, but you know what, thats sadly the image people have. They think my brother is some rain man type guy when really he just gets really stressed and just doesn’t have the temperament to do a full time job yet. I don’t believe these myself but its what most people think. Most people think blue collar work is for dummies sad but true. Why do you think that for a lot of jobs we have to import people to do the worst jobs. Because people don’t want to do it themselves. I wouldn’t mind it myself but most people would think i’m some lazy dumb person who couldn’t get a real job. I know plenty of blue collar people who are fine upstanding people but a lot of people look down on that type of work, and I know people would look down on me. I guess when it comes down to it I want status in some sense.

Yep.

For example I like intelligent women who are devoutly catholic but no woman is going to be with a guy who makes barely enough to support a family.

**In 28% of couples where both work, the wife outearns the husband.

nydailynews.com/news/national/record-number-wives-outearn-husbands-article-1.1299641**

That situation has inherent difficulties, but it is pretty common these days.

Life isn’t some disney BS fairytale where every dream comes true. Life is hard and the only thing good about it is that God is there to make things better and get us through and most of the time we don’t have our dreams come true. It may sound negative but its more realistic than believing some fairytale that everything will be okay. I figure I’ll suffer in this life until I’m called home
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Eh, the question is, are you doing your duty now? Are you taking appropriate care of yourself? Are you being the teacher that your kids need and if not, are you doing your best to troubleshoot your teaching (ideally with a senior colleague’s help) so that every week will be easier and every year will be better?

It’s not so much that women won’t marry men that don’t earn a lot (plenty do), but women don’t want to marry men that don’t earn a lot and are defeatist, negative, depressive and psychologically incapable of dealing with small children.
 
Well, I saw one video by a teacher on teaching who was saying that when people rebell, it’s not actually “you”, specifically, that they are rebelling against, necessarily, that it’s actually your position (authority), so NOT to take any of that personally, because it’s generally not.
 
When teaching theology, you can include technology in it by downloading videos from you tube. Let them view a video of a particular topic. Give them time to reflect on it. let them write about it and them let them share about it.

For social studies, I guess that would involve memory work. You can incorporate games
 
That is a distorted view of what confidence is.

Confidence is not picking on people. Confidence is when one believes in oneself.

Sometimes, what we have been through in our lives can either help us or hurt us with confidence. You don’t have to answer this question. I just wanted you to consider this.

Were you put down by someone…family? Did someone tell you at some point that you were nothing or a loser or something?

If they did, you need to go back and realize whoever said that was absolutely WRONG!

If you were, maybe you learned to internalize all that. That needs to be all undone.

Confidence is NOT picking on people. Would you want a doctor who wasn’t confident?

Sometimes, our views on things can get in the way. I used to have a wrong view of many things, may still have them, but I’m beginning to realize I’ve been mistaken. Like, I used to misunderstand, “Turning the other cheek”, what humility was, what Christian behavior was.

I thought I had to allow myself to be used as a doormat. Then, I read somewhere in the Bible that we should not allow fools to…forget the quote…but it said not to allow fools to mistreat us.

You are in the position now of being a teacher. If you don’t step up to the plate, they will make your life a living hell and for everyone around, because you will have basically no power to stop it.

If you can get their respect, you can do a great deal. In fact, you won’t get much done until you have it.

Oh yeah, and you are their teacher, not their friend. You want to be respected. That’s more important than being liked.
 
WildCatholic said:
I know it is not just me but ever since I’ve been about 12 i’ve worried i have autism and for me that’s terrible because most autistics I know even if they are nice are self centered people who don’t have empathy and no offense if I found out I was diagnosed I’d probably cry for hours because it means i’m not normal (I know that there is no definition of normal but to me normal means you have nothing wrong with you mentally or physically, and autism means you have faulty wiring in the brain so therefore I’m not normal and means it will be hard to relate to people which teaching is about, who knows maybe i’d qualify for disability since **everyone here thinks i’m autistic **and now wants to pity me for it (I hate pity because it dehumanizes people. Even if I do have autism i’m not some poor victim who can’t take care of himself)
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First, let me say that I have rea all the posts here and I did not get a single impression that anyone thought you are autistic. But you seem extremely nervous, and this is why they suggested you see a counselor. In your posts, a lot of pain you are feeling is coming right through, and it is the type of pain that can be helped by a good counselor or priest.

Your negative self-talk come through in your posts, and the fact you think it’s normal and not bad for you. I suggest you listen to what you say to yourself and imagine if you heard someone say those things to a child. (I would quote some but am limited by my hardware.)

If you heard someone talking so meanly to a child, you’d probably be mad at the person! You might even think that person was something of a bully, so in a way, you are sort of bullying yourself, and I think that you have seen that bullying people is bad for them. This is why we think the negative self-talk is bad for you, but since you are in the middle of it, it’s hard for you to see that.

I think you have a lots of fears in part as the result of having a difficult situation in your childhood (your brother), the fear of maybe being on the spectrum yourself, and also because you were bullied. The last is like people forcing bad ideas down your throat so you end up swallowing them–it leaves a mark.

Counselors who do cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) help their clients change their thought patterns, and they like to help their clients quickly. It’s not like psychoanalysis where you’re on a couch forever. A book about this type of therapy is Feeling Good by David Burns: you can get it from the library or interlibrary loan, and I see it pretty often in thrift shops. You might find this helpful.

One thing that helped me with this sort of negative self-talk was deciding that it was like a temptation. I resolved not to do it anymore, and when it came up, I would pray to Christ, to Mary, and to St Michael against it, asking for their help. Sometimes i would just say those prayers a few times, and it would go away and a short time later come back. Then I would say the prayers again. Sometimes this would go on for a couple of hours, and i just had to continue to fight against it over and over, but by being consistent about doing this when it came up, it began to go away.

A couple of notes about this: 1. I had to put other things in my mind instead–you could try praying for your pupils if you are doing something like driving. 2. a few weeks later, I started having very odd sneaky temptations to bad thinking or even sins, like I spent 20 minutes contemplating telling a “white lie.” This was odd, but after it happened a few times, I started being more on the lookout for it.
 
Be careful about being self-effacing. I have been like that a lot in my life, moreso in the past, and it is unattractive to healthy, well balanced people. I’m working on it.

I remember watching the movie, “The Great Debaters”, and one of them put himself down in a practice debate. The teacher said NEVER to do that, that it’d be the verbal equivalent of punching oneself in the face!
 
With the kids at the school, realize they have some problems.

Have faith in yourself.

Imagine a mental shield between you and them. When they say something hurtful, let it slide right off you. Realize first of all that it’s them, not you.
 
One time, I was teaching ESL to a group of teens in Mexico. I talked to my supervisor, asking what I was doing wrong. She said, “Nothing! They’re teens!”
 
The one talk i school I gave that I felt was good was the one where I had so much information I had to prune a lot out. Try planning more for your class than you need, so you will go quickly through each part in the attempt to finish everything. That way you will keep the students occupied for the whole time rather than having those few minutes where they can get onto a bad track.

The more time you spend fretting about what you did wrong and thinking you’ll be fired and forever miserable as a result, the less time and energy you’ll have for improving as a teacher. Look at yourself as someone who is learning and experimenting to see what works with this particular group of students rather than as a person on the edge of a terrible fate.

Remember that you are in charge of the classroom, and if they don’t behave, you have recourses (ask at your school what is generally done). Don’t talk: gaze steadily and silently at the idiotic student who would dare to disrupt your class. Use those comments teachers used to use: Johnny, is there something you would like to share with the class? Betty, would you like to read that note aloud to us?

ETA: since i had to correct a typo, I thought I’d add this: I found that having a minor action to take allowed me to correct my children earlier on in their misbehavior. Stay on top of the beginnings of misbehavior and you don’t have to worry about major insanity: first use the gaze, then something easy like having the student move to the front if the classroom then the steady gaze til they do it, that type of thing. Think Gibbs in the tv show NCIS–that’s where i learned it.
 
Xantippe said:
Eh, the question is, are you doing your duty now? Are you taking appropriate care of yourself? Are you being the teacher that your kids need and if not, are you doing your best to troubleshoot your teaching (ideally with a senior colleague’s help) so that every week will be easier and every year will be better?

It’s not so much that women won’t marry men that don’t earn a lot (plenty do), but women don’t want to marry men that don’t earn a lot and are defeatist, negative, depressive and psychologically incapable of dealing with small children.
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Well i’m trying but I don’t even know where to start. I’m in an extremely small school where every teacher has about 8 different classes a day so its not that easy to get help. Also to answer your’e last part, maybe i just won’t get married. Maybe God made me with all these issues and sad as it may be maybe i’ll just be single forever if i’m so incapable and depressed. Granted I think I have good qualities (loyal, godly, resilient, faithful, but I guess that’s not enough or I guess having my issues wipes out any good). And you know what maybe I am capable
 
Wild Catholic, just stop it !!! Stop being so negative. You are not the first person to be scared in teaching. Confidence comes with time and experience. Instead of worrying research more on classroom management. Control of classroom, classroom activities and time management. Time management is also very important to make sure you are not doing the activities so fast.

Please be positive. You can do it. You are not the first person to go through this.
 
You can start by knowing your materials really well and by researching on different classroom activities. Have you memorized your student`s names?
 
Mayita30 said:
You can start by knowing your materials really well and by researching on different classroom activities. Have you memorized your student`s names?
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Um yes but i’m good with names and it’s a small school. And yes i’ll try to be positive even though positive thinking is ****.I prefer realistic thinking. Life isn’t all rainbows and sunshines and cupcakes. A lot of the times it sucks and thats why i turn to God. If things were all good i’d turn to him less probably
 
WildCatholic said:
Well i’m trying but I don’t even know where to start. I’m in an extremely small school where every teacher has about 8 different classes a day so its not that easy to get help. Also to answer your’e last part, maybe i just won’t get married. Maybe God made me with all these issues and sad as it may be maybe i’ll just be single forever if i’m so incapable and depressed. Granted I think I have good qualities (loyal, godly, resilient, faithful, but I guess that’s not enough or I guess having my issues wipes out any good). And you know what maybe I am capable
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Hang in there.

Please don’t throw in the towel on love. How old are you? No. You don’t know what’s in store for you.

Also, even if teaching turned out not to be for you doesn’t mean you’re not meant to have love.

And no, if you are “…loyal, godly, resilient, faithful…”, that’s a LOT!

You’re going through a rough patch.
 
I think somebody has probably put you down a lot in your life…and that you accepted it as valid, when it’s not.
 
WildCatholic said:
Um yes but i’m good with names and it’s a small school.

**A lot of people would kill to be good with names. That’s an invaluable gift.
**

And yes i’ll try to be positive even though positive thinking is ****.

That was not positive thinking.

I prefer realistic thinking. Life isn’t all rainbows and sunshines and cupcakes. A lot of the times it sucks and thats why i turn to God. If things were all good i’d turn to him less probably
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It’s actually not realistic to expect that your first year of teaching ought to be like Stand and Deliver or you’re not cut out for teaching. That’s unrealistic. Realistic thinking is understanding that you start at zero and you work and you get better and you work and you get better and you keep working and you keep getting better every year.

That’s realism.

Likewise, it’s realism to understand that women do not want a man that they have to be mommy to. We don’t want to have to be saying “there there,” kissing his boo boos, and propping him up emotionally all the time, when there’s grocery money to be made, a home to take care of, children who need to be cared for, and we have needs for emotional support, too. Pretty much no woman wants a man who is essentially an extra child to take care of.

If you can stand on your own two feet emotionally and financially, there’s eventually going to be a good woman who will take you.
 
WildCatholic said:
Um yes but i’m good with names and it’s a small school. And yes i’ll try to be positive even though positive thinking is ****.I prefer realistic thinking. Life isn’t all rainbows and sunshines and cupcakes. A lot of the times it sucks and thats why i turn to God. If things were all good i’d turn to him less probably
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I’ll give you a hint.

People who are successful really do have a positive outlook on life. You can read any number of self-help books or inspirational things and they all focus on your own internal attitude.

Positive thinking is not BS, it’s actually a trait of people with successful lives. Some people have it naturally, some people cultivate it, but it’s there.

Work on your attitude. I say this in all Christian love, not to dismiss you or your issues.
 
Xantippe said:
It’s actually not realistic to expect that your first year of teaching ought to be like Stand and Deliver or you’re not cut out for teaching. That’s unrealistic. Realistic thinking is understanding that you start at zero and you work and you get better and you work and you get better and you keep working and you keep getting better every year.

That’s realism.

Likewise, it’s realism to understand that women do not want a man that they have to be mommy to. We don’t want to have to be saying “there there,” kissing his boo boos, and propping him up emotionally all the time, when there’s grocery money to be made, a home to take care of, children who need to be cared for, and we have needs for emotional support, too. Pretty much no woman wants a man who is essentially an extra child to take care of.

If you can stand on your own two feet emotionally and financially, there’s eventually going to be a good woman who will take you.
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I honestly can’t think of anything to say to you because i’ll just end up being negative. Well except I want to know how I can be that way for someone? I literally have no experience with it. I grew up with parents who weren’t very hard on me and I wonder if as a result I turned into an emotional under achiever since whenever I was bullied they comforted where as I should have just been made tough and told to avoid it. Financially i’m okay but emotionally its like i don’t even know how to be strong. Is there is disorder where people can’t grow up emotionally?
 
PaulinVA said:
I’ll give you a hint.

People who are successful really do have a positive outlook on life. You can read any number of self-help books or inspirational things and they all focus on your own internal attitude.

Positive thinking is not BS, it’s actually a trait of people with successful lives. Some people have it naturally, some people cultivate it, but it’s there.
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Yes.

While not all positive thinkers are successful, pretty much all successful people are positive thinkers.
 
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